There are tears I should have shed for you.
Sometimes I feel them in the backs of my eyelids.
Where I stored them
so long ago
when I lied
and told myself that I would never cry for you again.
Three years in the making
our tragic end
the heartbreak heard around the world.
When I told you I'd stay
but you didn't ask me to.
The one where I packed my bags
and moved across the country
leaving you in the wake
of the storm that had been us.
The torment of fighting for you
of fighting to love and be loved by you
Three years of holding you while you hated yourself
and your life
and everything.
Only to get you through the darkness
and have you throw me back to the wolves
from which you had crawled out of.
Bloodied and broken it was there that I would wait
wait for you to need me again.
wait for it to be convenient to love me again.
Three years of playing your game
of always getting two steps ahead before always falling a lifetime behind.
Waiting for the conditions to be right
and the music to play in tune.
Waiting for the sky to turn
that shade of blue
that it always seemed to be
when we would lie together
and you would trace my tattoos
tell me I was perfection
tell me that I really was loved.
The early morning blue
when everything was silent
except the sound of your breathing
while you finally drifted away from me.
Three years of leaving without saying a word
kissing your cheek while you slept as I got dressed
before leaving without a sound
to drive home alone
and wait until I was worthy enough
to be loved again.
A thousand mornings led to this.
to the morning I left
drove home alone
and didn't wait.
The morning you didn't come after me
where there was no cusak moment.
There was no music.
No breathing.
Nothing that made this worth it.
That morning I took what I had left for you
what was left of the heart I had placed in your hands
dropped it out the window on I-81
as I drove
and drove
and drove until I saw the ocean.
Where I dumped your memories into the sea
stripped off the person you had carelessly made me
swam naked and unattached
as I wept for the years
for the moments
for those mornings.
And when the water had finally washed you away
and I was clean
I took the last of those tears
and placed them in a secret place
deep behind my eyelids
perhaps as a reminder
or perhaps just as a memory
of the three years that I loved you.
Before you let me walk away.